Sherlock Can't Sleep
by Mally O'Jack
Summary: In which, after finishing up a case in the heart of rural England, Lestrade, Donovan, Sherlock and John drive back to London.


I loved writing this story, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Inspired and influenced by the seriously brilliant 'Road trip series' by stupid_drawings which isn't on this site but can be found at 'archive of our own'.

Sherlock Can't Sleep

by Mally O'Jack

When the battery in John's laptop started to get low, his computer would flash a warning sign at him. If he ignored the sign then an ominous X would appear over the battery icon, and shortly after his screen would go black and his computer would die.

Sherlock was like that. He'd be off operating at maximum capacity, wholly taken up by the case, or the experiment, or whatever project he happened to be working on. But sooner or later his body would betray him, and the warning signs would appear. John had learnt to recognise them.

First of all he'd start to get irritable, even petulant, and if John tried to say anything then he'd get even more irritable and petulant and start acting like he had a persecution complex.

Also his movements, usually so precise and clean, would become sloppy, as if he couldn't be bothered to move his body around any more. He would do things like _lean_, and _slouch_, and _sag_.

If John wasn't around to tell him to go to bed, or if Sherlock was being particularly stubborn, then sooner or later his body would simply shut down, and Sherlock would crash out. Anywhere. He'd be slumped on top of the kitchen table, or at the lab bench at Barts, or even one time – according to Molly – over a corpse in the morgue. Anything stationery was fair game.

Which was currently why Sherlock wasn't doing so well falling asleep in a moving car.

* * *

They'd taken a train down; Sherlock, John, Lestrade and Donovan. It wasn't an official Scotland Yard investigation as such, but Lestrade owed DI Finch a favour. Three manic, intense, smelly days in a farming community deep in rural England, and then a heavy, unforeseen snowfall, which of course took everyone by surprise including the railway operators. So no trains. Which meant at least a four hour car journey back to London across winding country lanes since the motorways were all jammed.

Lestrade had borrowed a car from DI Finch and was behind the wheel. Donovan was in the passenger seat as she claimed she got travel sick if she didn't sit up front. So that left John and Sherlock in the back.

And the warning signs were starting.

* * *

"Any preference for a radio station?" Lestrade says.

John shrugs. "Don't mind," as Sally says, "Whatever." So Lestrade tunes into the football.

"Brilliant choice," Sherlock says with venom."Grown men getting paid an obscene amount of money to kick a ball around. It's pathetic."

"Yeah, all right," John says, "tell us how you really feel, why don't you?" Sherlock rolls his eyes at the sarcasm and slouches down against the passenger door.

Lestrade raises his eyebrows and shares a look with John in the rear view mirror. "Classic FM?" Lestrade suggests.

"Oh marvellous," Sherlock says to the window, "uneducated chavs pretending to be snobs and thinking they understand the inner workings of Mozart because they happen to hear it on a car advert; my favourite."

"I actually like Classic FM," Sally says then, turning round.

"My point exactly."

"Radio 2," John says loudly before Sally can respond, "can't go wrong with that. We might be in time for Pop Master."

Sherlock mutters something and John catches the word "cretin" but chooses to ignore him.

As it is, the weather is affecting the radio signal, and so after a few tries fiddling with the dials Lestrade gives up. It is quiet, save for the swish of the windscreen wipers clearing the snow flurries away.

"Well," Lestrade says brightly, "at least Finchey owes _me_ a favour now. His brother knows one of the Chelsea players; maybe he can get me a season ticket at the Bridge."

"I think he's probably done you a favour already by letting you borrow his wife's car," Sally says with an indulgent smile. Lestrade grimaces, and John grins at his expression in the mirror. "Yeah, Greg, how exactly were you planning on returning it?"

"Ugh," Sherlock says then in a tone of disgust, "can we not do small talk?"

John catches the look Sally shoots Lestrade, and he feels a little embarrassed on behalf of his flatmate.

"You, sleep," he says, pointing a finger at him.

"I'm not a child," Sherlock snaps back.

_Could've fooled me,_ John wants to say, but he holds his tongue. There is silence in the car again, and now it is a bit more chilly than before.

For lack of anything better to do, he looks out the window. The snow's really coming down now, covering the tops of the hedges.

The car jolts then, shaking Sherlock upright.

"Sorry," Lestrade says. "Pothole."

"Idiot," Sherlock mutters, settling down against the door again. John sees Sally open her mouth to defend her boss, and Lestrade give a barely imperceptible shake of his head.

When they are jostled again, Sherlock is more vocal. "You're doing it on purpose!"

"We're in the countryside, Sherlock," Lestrade says, laughing at Sherlock's outrage; "the road's full of them."

The laughter seems to infuriate Sherlock even more. "Stop the car. John's driving."

John holds up his hands, amused. "I can't. I haven't got a license."

Everyone talks at once then. Lestrade is saying to him, "Didn't you drive tanks and that in the army?" just as Sally is telling Sherlock, "A pothole's a pothole, it's got nothing to do with who's driving."

"Yeah," he says to Greg, "but you don't need a driver's license for that. Civilian one, I mean," and Greg says, "What's the top speed of a tank, roughly?" and then Sherlock lets out an exasperated cry and everyone stops talking again.

John watches Sherlock then. Really watches him. His friend is looking thoroughly miserable. He has his eyes closed, and is trying to sleep against the side of the window, except the road is bumpy, and his head keeps smacking against the glass. He shifts, trying to sleep with his head on his shoulder, except that doesn't work either. He hisses in frustration.

Wordlessly John hands him his coat. Sherlock glares at him, but takes the offered coat and bundles it up into a make-shift pillow that he wedges between the crook of his neck and the car door.

John can't help feeling sorry for him, even though he is acting like a bit of a prat. After all, Sherlock has been running around the countryside non-stop for three days, being extraordinary, and now he is crashing, his battery at critical, and Sally is glaring at him, and John wonders if she can even see the exhaustion around Sherlock's eyes, and Lestrade probably understands which is why the man's been exercising an inhuman amount of patience so far, and it is at this point that Lestrade goes over another pothole, and Sherlock is jerked forward.

"WILL YOU -"

And without thinking, John reaches out and unfastens Sherlock's seatbelt, and before the detective can protest, pushes him none-too-gently down so that Sherlock's head is resting on his lap.

"Now go to sleep," he tells the back of Sherlock's head.

Initially he feels Sherlock tense against his arms, but John refuses to release his stabilising grip, and after a few minutes he gradually feels Sherlock relax and the pressure on his lap increase, and then all at once Sherlock's entire body seems to melt and go limp.

He nods in satisfaction, and looks up into the eyes of Sally, who is craning her head looking at him sceptically. He gives her his sweetest smile, daring her to say anything, and she turns away shaking her head and looking at Lestrade. Lestrade ignores her. Instead he says to John, "Did you see that Top Gear episode where Clarkson tries to outrun a tank in a Range Rover?"

"Yeah, yeah I did."

And so Sally listens to her MP3 player, and Greg and John talk about tanks, and Sherlock sleeps soundly all the way back to Baker Street.

_Finis_


End file.
